NowNS: African immigrant entrepreneur makes a better life in Halifax

Moncton, the northern Italian industrial powerhouse of Milan and the southeastern African nation of Mozambique have little or perhaps more likely nothing in common — beyond all three places having provided a home for different durations to Flavia Mabota-Calvert.

And when it comes to building a business and raising a family, Halifax is Mabota-Calvert’s quick and easy pick over all three of those places — as well as the northern England city of Leeds, where she also lived for half a year.

But why Halifax? It’s not like the city is famous for its long list of job openings. And no one, especially Italians and Africans, ever moved to the Maritimes for the weather, right?

Explains Mabota-Calvert, “In Italy, you have the best food and history. But it’s very difficult to integrate (into that country). Tradition is very strong there and people don’t always like change, she says.

“For example, I couldn’t eat with my Italian boyfriend in public, because I was black.

“They aren’t racist, just ignorant.”

Mabota-Calvert is quick to contrast Italy, where she lived for 20 years, with Halifax, “a great city.”

In the latter, she says, “People here don’t care what colour you are.”

The other plus about Haligonians, she says, is that they’re “honest and fair.”

“If you work, they will pay you. In Italy, people will pay you only as much as they have to. Or not at all, if they can.”

Mabota-Calvert is well-positioned to contrast and compare. She grew up in Mozambique, a sometimes war-torn nation that the International Fund for Agricultural Development calls one of the world’s most impoverished and “underdeveloped” countries.

She fled her home at 19, “horrified” among other push factors by “corruption” and its near-total absence of women’s rights.

Two decades living in a tiny town half an hour’s drive from Milan followed, much of it working for one family as its only cook and housekeeper. During this time, Mabota-Calvert also attended cooking school and subsequently opened, owned and operated her own restaurant for several years.

Eventually, however, she caved in to nagging from her sister, then living in Shediac, N.B., and arrived in Canada on a six-month tourist visa in 2010.

Not long after, Mabota-Calvert moved 27 kilometres down the road to Moncton, where she met New Brunswicker and husband-to-be Phil Calvert.

Working hard on her English along the way, Mabota-Calvert applied for and was eventually approved for Permanent Resident status, allowing her, among other wins, the right to work and remain in Canada.

In 2013, the couple moved to Halifax simply, she says, in search of better prospects. With less than $100 to their name, Mabota-Calvert — more from desperation than anything else — anxiously submitted a Work Wanted advertisement to Kijiji, a popular website for buying and selling goods and services.

“I’ve never stopped working 60-70-hour weeks after that day,” she laughs.

Her first client — a “lady with a big house” — was so grateful for a day of her help with all things domestic that she told 10 of her friends about Mabota-Calvert. And they told 10 friends, and so on. And the first client is still a client, she says.

For a year or so, until the couple could afford a $2,000 car and Mabota-Calvert could get a driver’s licence, she schlepped her kit and her bike on an off buses right around town.

These days, however, Mabota-Calvert owns a three-strong fleet of vehicles, each decorated with a bright blue logo sporting a mop and a chef’s hat. With a lot of help from her cultural conduit hubby as well as many Haligonians, she has turned that advert into a fast-growing company.

Flavia’s Magical Cleaning & Cooking currently employs nine and works for, as of September, 121 clients across the municipality.

Mabota-Calvert spoke to the Chronicle Herald at her Cowie Hill home, which doubles as the company’s offices. Or office, to be precise. She says the business is growing “faster than mushrooms,” adding approximately 20 per cent revenue year on year. This year, Mabota-Calvert aims to buy a fourth car and hire a couple more cleaners.

In addition to a full suite of cleaning services, Mabota-Calvert delivers a range of catering services, including grocery pickup. She specializes in Italian and Mozambican cuisine, the latter comprising rice, coconut and polenta.

Despite growing up without even basic plumbing or electricity, Mabota-Calvert has been quick to leverage cloud-based tech tools such as Google Calendar, which she uses constantly to provide employees with detailed site-related job notes on security, special client requirements and, in one case, a pet cobra. The tool, she says, gives her an at-a-glance and high-level view of each “stressful” day’s fast-changing priorities, and also has allowed her to get around the language barrier that can quickly bog down non-English-speaking new Canadians. Other software, meanwhile, allows clients to pull down cleaning and cooking menus.

Mabota-Calvert was careful also to plug into whatever help she could get from the Halifax-based Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia (ISANS), which she says enabled her to develop her business idea, helped her access English language training, and provided really useful coaching on the rules and regulations of doing business in Nova Scotia.

Now’s she lining up some support from Halifax’s Black Business Initiative, a group that helps African Nova Scotians grow businesses. She’s hoping to get that relationship underway before she takes off to Mozambique for a few weeks — to get the ball rolling on adopting a couple of kids.